In this hangout, some of Orinam’s members who are gay, talk about their respective journeys of realizing and accepting their sexuality and their coming out stories.

“அம்மா-அப்பா, அனுமார் கோவில், சைதாப்பேட்டை, சுவாமி விவேகானந்தர், சினிமா போஸ்டர், சின்ன வீடு, முதற் காதல், முடிவில்லா பயணங்கள்.”

இந்த ஹங்அவுட்டில் ஓரினம் அமைப்பை சேர்ந்த சில தன்பாலீர்ப்பு கொண்ட அங்கத்தினர்கள், தாங்கள் எப்படி தங்கள் பாலீர்ப்பை உணர்ந்து, ஏற்றுக்கொண்டார்கள் என்பதை பற்றியும், தங்களின் வெளியே வந்த அனுபவங்களையும் பற்றியும் பேசுகிறார்கள்.

பகுதி 1/Part 1:

பகுதி 2/Part 2:

All Hangouts: https://new2.orinam.net/tag/hangout/

Call for protection of rights of sexual and gender minorities: Rally at Valluvar Kottam, Chennai, January 11, 2014 3-430 PM

Rally photos:

• Orinam Photos

Media coverage:

• Times of India: Month after SC verdict LGBT takes out rally again

Queer Madras, and sundry musings on sexuality
True, if you scout the city with the eye of an amateur ornithologist looking for a distinct subspecies called the homosexual, you are likely to conclude that it’s a rare bird or at least an elusive one. There are no bars or yuppified clubs in whose smoky recesses gay-identified men gather for an evening of dancing or cruising. Then again, Madras is hardly as exuberant as Bombay or Bangalore to begin with.

What I would include under the rubric of queerness is more subtle and far more pervasive than any institutionalized lesbian or gay identity. It’s like those flakes of tomato pulp nearly dissolved in steaming peppery Madras rasam, lurking below the surface, gratifyingly tasty yet barely palpable, and threatening to vanish if you attempt to define them or pick them out from the matrix of which they are a part and which they help constitute.

Some recollections.

All the schools and colleges I attended in Madras had queerness so amply represented that for the longest time I firmly believed that the Indian Kinsey Zero was a mythical creature. The Catholic boys school: where the gorgeous Malayali boy in my French class missed no opportunity to make salacious body contact and out of whose notoriously clumsy hands the pen would invariably fall into my lap, affording him scope for a leisurely feel.

Even that arts-and-science college that was the bastion of Mylapore middle class conventionality may have been straight-laced but was anything but straight. Encounters between day-scholars and hostelites were all too frequent, eroticised by a sense of otherness in both parties and enacted in late afternoons in decrepit hostel rooms with windows wide open, as the coconut fronds rustled in conspiratorial bemusement.

The hip rival college west of Gemini was no repository of heterosexual virtue either. A friend and study-partner resided in its hostel: this fellow was plenty smart, witty, a debating team rival, and big crush of mine. On one particularly memorable occasion after we had finished taking an competitive exam practice test in his room, he pulled out his stack of straight porn to show me, a common gesture of male bonding. Of the momentary wordless debate that ensued on the issue of who would initiate what with whom, I fondly recall there were two winners…

Inter-collegiate literary, music and art competitions, especially those in which out-of-town colleges would participate, were incubators for sexual exploration. It was in one such event at a co-ed college that I met the woman with whom I was to have my first “all the way” experience, one that left me starry eyed and gazing vacantly into space weeks after she was long gone. The intercollegiate festival of a prominent engineering college had immensely popular light and Western music competitions to which the hip crowds thronged while the more paavam-fied junata stood around the periphery in their rubber chappals and gaped at the unabashed revelry. Drawn to one such event by the hype, but finding myself out of place in both of these demographic strata, I opted instead for a walk through the campus woods, where, having left behind the crowds and the smattering of boy-girl couples making out or getting stoned behind sundry bushes, I chanced upon a vigorous scene of what the French describe so delicately as soixante-neuf, involving, yup, two guys who were audibly having the time of their lives.

But queerness wasn’t confined to the classrooms and grounds of academic institutions in Madras. The PTC buses, especially the 23A and 4G routes that serviced several colleges, packed in warm horny bodies like vegetables in aviyal stew. As the guys huddled and jostled in clumps to letch at the gals yonder, displays of homosocial bonding slid seamlessly into sexualized contact, all ostensibly catalysed by the sight of one “deadly babe, macchi” or the other. Tales of nocturnal travel on Thiruvalluvar inter-state buses are beyond the scope of this article…

How can I forget the venerable music auditorium, where, at an evening concert during the 1984 December cutcheri season, I was groped by an elderly gentleman in a fine pattu veshti (silk dhoti) as his wife sat on the other side resplendent in Kanjivaram sari and oversized nose stud, blissfully unaware of what her husband was up to as she noisily and inaccurately kept time to the ongoing keertanam.

As dusk fell on the corporation playground opposite the park on Venkatanarayana Road in T Nagar, bodybuilders would trickle in to pump iron and occasionally more. At the now defunct music school operating out of a dinky garage near GN Chetty Road: while young girls were sent to acquire credentials that would enhance their future marriageability, the boys usually went of their own accord, and not a few lingered after the school closed for the evening, the mridangams and violins were stacked away and the lights turned off.

I remember the strip mall in Besant Nagar where, on one of my visits home in 1995, a former classmate whom I was meeting after a long time proceeded to demonstrate his recently acquired skills at seducing even the straightest of guys. As I looked on in wonderment, he licked his lips, fluttered his eyelashes, ground his hips, and girded his loins as he minced over to a strapping specimen of Mallu masculinity, gave him a deliberate once-over that said it all, and walked on forward and around the block. In moments, the cruisee stubbed out his cigarette, glanced furtively around, and hastened to catch up with my friend. That was the last I saw of them that evening.

The more cynical or jaded reader might inquire: what relevance do these admittedly lurid anecdotes have to our contemporary (1990s) discourses on queer identities and movements in India? Everything, in my opinion. Bear with me as I detail my argument. See, some people would be wont to dismiss the above examples as opportunistic or situational homosexual behavior that “regular” heterosexual guys would readily engage in when testosterone surged and female companionship was unavailable. To yet others, these instances would illustrate the tyranny of a society that invisibilizes gay people and allows them only such fleeting encounters devoid of emotional substance. Both these views may be partially correct, but, in my opinion, are overly simplistic as they refuse to acknowledge the inherent complexity and fluidity of desire.

Mixed in there with the libidinous teenagers and adults are individuals stuck in unhappy marriages, some male “friends” whose relationships remain invisible to most of the rest of society, not to mention the single women who deliberately acquired enough educational or professional credentials that they made themselves over-qualified for marriage in the eyes of prospective in-laws. Some of these “spinsters” live with their parents. No questions are asked about their sexual lives, of course, because it is assumed that women have no sexual desires, only sexual duties. Even parents who know what their daughters really want would prefer not to know.

There are untold tales of boys from conservative families who choose the spiritual track, sometimes leaving their homes to join ashrams or becoming vadhyars/pujaris because these options are queer enough in their unconventionality that they can allow them to escape the trappings of heterosexual marriage.

There also tales of men and woman who have unquestioningly acceded to their wishes of family and society and are not too unhappy with their heterosexual lives, but may have chosen other options had they been available.

Sure, we need gay and lesbian people to come out and identify as such, gaining acceptance within their milieux. But what about the countless others whose sexualities are more complex or fluid? By subscribing to the rigid binarism of sexual orientation most often prevalent in gay rights discourses, we deny some of the richness of human erotic experience. We also run the risk of pathologizing sexual orientation by presenting gays and lesbians as that minority that are only “that way” because they could not help it. While intending to elicit sympathy for their cause, such “born that way” arguments only serve to distance gays from the rest of society. They shove the bisexuals into one of two closets and further vitiate bipartisan politics.

Such rigid identity politics also have serious public health implications – HIV/AIDS awareness schemes that only target gay-identified men are going to exclude a large subset of the population that is not exclusively homosexual or is not gay-identified.

I am pleading for a more inclusive movement that recognizes the heterogeneity within our communities, that instead of creating “us” versus “them” polarities that only alienate, points out that some of us are also them, some of them are also us. A movement that challenges the gender inequality and heterosexism that’s at the root of not just homophobia but also institutionalized misogyny – brideburning, domestic abuse and rape. A movement founded on the premise that we have the right to choose who we love, and that it does not matter if we are guided by our hearts or politics or DNA.

Any takers?

To reach the author, please leave a comment on the Orinam website.

Hearty congratulations to Living Smile Vidya on being awarded a scholarship by the Charles Wallace India Trust to pursue theatre in the UK.

Smiley is a writer, actor and artist who lives and works in Chennai. Her book  I am Vidya, published in Tamil, has been subsequently translated into English, Malayalam, Marathi and Kannada. She is also an accomplished actor, known for her work with Srijith Sundaram’s Kattiyakkaari production Molagapodi  as well as with other productions and directors. Her art work has won acclaim at both queer and mainstream exhibitions. She has also worked in Tamil and Malayalam movies as Assistant Director.

We also draw the attention of readers to her reflections on being a Dalit transwoman and feminist, in this excerpt of a conversation with Kaveri Karthik and Gee Ameena Suleiman in Bangalore.

Lesbian. Lezbian. Lez-beeyun.

I took the longest time to say the word. Even longer to put my name in front of it. When I first caught grasp of what it meant to me, I’d mouth it ever so slowly, never letting the sound of it escape my lips for fear I might actually hear it. When I mustered up the courage to whisper it, I hated the way it sounded; it seemed so dirty, filthy, unnatural.

It’s the first word I’m teaching my kids to say. Not mum, not mommy. Lesbian.

One rainy day, I was wrestling my conscience in front of the bathroom mirror and I couldn’t contain myself. Index finger pointed at the center of my reflection’s accusatory nose I roared, “Lesbian!” The argument was over. I smiled. It fit. I said it again and again. By the end of the day, I was Samira, a lesbian. The rainbow was in plain sight.

My story isn’t one for ages. It won’t go down in history books. But it has started conversations. Conversations that aren’t had often enough growing up in India.

I am a woman, a lesbian, and an Indian — three wonderful minorities that have, over the years, created a strong personality I am proud to call my own.

Before I moved to the United States, I lived in Chennai, India, for 23 years. I’ve never been in the closet. Well, not really. I’ve always been butch — short hair, boys’ clothes, a gentleman’s manner, and of course, a way with the ladies. But in India, not being in the closet doesn’t necessarily mean being out of it. As long as you keep the tongue tied and let the blind ignore the obvious, being a lesbian is a piece of cake. But it wasn’t so much about being gay as it was about being different.

It was a daily routine of playing the tomboy for my family until it got so old everybody knew I wasn’t growing out of it. It was time to talk. But silence was all I ever heard. I ended every sentence just as soon as I put the words together.

I must’ve been about 18 when a cop cornered me at the end of the street. To him I was a young boy with an attitude problem. I had it coming. Let’s just say what happened next wasn’t pleasant and I didn’t leave the scene unscarred.

I didn’t say a word. I didn’t tell my parents. I didn’t tell anyone.

I moved to the U.S. a few years later. I wasn’t trying to escape; I’d learned to live with my life and I did a pretty decent job of it. I took to the stage. I sang. I wrote poetry, stories and plays. I had a job. I did well for myself. I didn’t know what I was missing.

When I came to Tampa, all I could say was, “I am gay.” I still couldn’t stomach the word lesbian. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I liked being gay. I was okay with it, proud even. But I couldn’t talk about it. Not with my roommates, not with my Indian friends.

I haven’t met another gay Indian woman in Tampa. I wonder where they are, sometimes if they are. As the self-proclaimed, stand-alone Indian lesbian in the area, I have taken it upon myself to educate the rest of the Indian population in Tampa about the LGBT community as best I can.

Conversations can answer questions and deconstruct stereotypes. Sometimes, it’s just as easy as that. Sometimes, it’s not.

Indians can be difficult and incredibly confusing at times. An undeniable mythological history filled with subjects of sexuality and I hadn’t heard anything about it until I looked. I mean searched. More like dug deep into Google and pulled it out. I’ve heard an Indian wrote the Kamasutra. I’m beginning to think that’s a conspiracy, a big one.

I love being a true Indian, one who can embrace the honesty of an inclusive culture. But it isn’t the only culture I’m a part of. After years of contemplation and trying to marry the two, I now wear both flags with pride.

Three and a half years later and I am an obnoxious lesbian. The stage knows it. My audience knows it. My pen knows it. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube know it.

The world knows it.

As for my family in Chennai, some conversations are just easier with strangers.

Orinam’s note: An earlier version of this essay was published on Creative Loafing’s LGBT blog

Image source: The Hindu

RJ Balaji, a radio jockey with the 92.7 BIG FM station in Chennai, has podcast his thoughts on men’s roles in the home and how strong beliefs in and reinforcement of gender roles lead to a range of oppressions including the recent Delhi rape and countless other sexual crimes.

We are including herewith a link to the original podcast.

Our hearty thanks to Mr. Balaji for sharing his progressive views, and to Orinam member KMRamki for the English translation provided below.

Even though the discussion of gender roles is in the context of violence against women it applies equally to violence against LGBT people. Strong notions of how a man and woman should be/behave/look are what result in verbal, physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse of those of us who do not conform to such rigidly gendered expectations of society

– Orinam webteam

Being Hu’man’

(English Translation by KM Ramki)

A humble word, to all my fellow men…

I mean, for us to have pride, to feel proud, that we are men.. I don’t see anything there. I don’t know what’s there (to feel pride). You say we can grow a moustache… is that a superior quality?

Some say, “you talk about this now only because it happened in Delhi… will you talk about it if had happened in Chennai, or Thoothukudi or Sri Lanka?” To them, this is not a Delhi, Mumbai, state-over-state, country-over-country issue.

It’s an issue of you and me: it’s a vulgar revelation of what we think in our hearts about women. These rapes, the violence, have become just that. Even if only one in hundred, or one in a thousand men perform these acts, it is true that the rest of us also have  thoughts that we are ashamed of. We don’t say it aloud.

For the first time, we are angrily protesting against something all over India, about something that affects us, with the intention that there needs to be a solution to it. Meanwhile, how long this anger will last, what the results from these protests will be, what will actually be done, is not in your hands or mine.

However, I want to speak as an ordinary man, about what we usually do, how it can create a better environment. That’s what this podcast is about.

We, men, say we are modern thinking, we are youth, etc. Though we praise ourselves so much, but it is deeply rooted belief even among us, that a woman has to cook for me, press my clothes, etc. Even if both of them work, go to sleep after 11.30 in the night, the woman is expected to wake up at 5 in the morning, make coffee, cook and then go to work. But if the guy occasionally cooks one day, he takes immense pride in it. Even today, we think it’s a thing to be (inordinately) proud of for a guy to say he cooks (occasionally). It’s actually nothing special.

Women don’t take pride in saying I cook daily, I press my husband’s clothes, I get my children ready for school daily, etc. We have impressed on them that it’s their way of living.

Do guys boldly say “I work at home, I cook at home, and I see no shame in it. She and I both work”? If we go to a corporate space, and see four women smoking, what comments do we pass about those smoking women? If we see a girl in a pub at night, we know what comments we make about her. Isn’t it all quite shameful?

What’s so ‘manly’  or ‘womanly’ about these things? We claim to be very modern. If a girl comes to the pub with us, she is good, but if she goes with others, she is bad? Smoking or drinking is going to affect everyone’s body and health. If you take a stand, that smoking or drinking is wrong, whoever does it, there is some fairness to it. But you claim guys can do it, but women should not. If I point [the hypocrisy] out, you challenge me, that I don’t know Indian culture and mores. It’s in this country with these vaunted culture and mores, that we are having all these rapes.

The most important thing is for us to reflect on what thoughts we hold about women. To this day, husbands tease their wives if they skip cooking one day.

There is this claim that all these are happening because women dress the way they do. What a shameful thought! A minister or some politician has said that we should ban skirts that schoolgirls wear. This is crazy. A three year old girl and a sixty year old grandmother have also been raped. Were they also dressed for rape?

This is not about the few rapists. This is about you and me. When we were young adults, how many times have we made jokes or passed comments based on the clothes women are wearing, or their physical parts? Has a woman ever made sexual jokes and harassed a guy based on his clothes? They never have that thought. We guys mostly think cheap thoughts.

We always say women are elegant, graceful and beautiful. I don’t know when these tags and adjectives are going to change. Are women nothing beyond these? Who are we to be moral police, to decide how they can dress, and what their dress says about the sort of a character they are? You and I have no right to to blame them, or tag them. It is also immoral to do that. We should understand that.

People ask why that girl was in a bus at 10 pm. Why shouldn’t she be in a bus at that time? Who are we to ask that question? They say things happened because that girl went to a pub at midnight. No, it did not happen because she went to a pub at midnight. It happened because your thoughts are perverted.

In this same India in which we used to give prominence and pre-eminence to women. But now, every woman is expected to fear and be submissive to a guy. It’s become the norm. If a guy does the chores at home, fears his wife, we make fun of him, and make him a comedy piece in our movies. What is wrong with that? What is shameful in that?

The other day, when I said this on Twitter, some guy replied, “Men should be men, women should be women. That will solve all the problems.” What does it mean, “women should be women”? Why should we define what women should be, how they should be? Who are we to do that? This question is for the menfolk.

If you ask me what qualifies to sermonize on this, I partake in all the chores at my place. I wipe the floor, I bathe our kid, I get him ready for school. I don’t feel ashamed of it. I don’t feel a need to boast about the times I cook at home. It’s just a part of my life. When my son grows up, he will not have the thought that women are beneath him, that they should serve him, that only his mother should get him ready for school. I wash my son’s butt. I get him ready for school. I feed him. So, my son, when he grows up, won’t have such [discriminatory] thoughts, and I am responsible for that, as his father. As a man, I will be responsible for the happiness of the women around me. I don’t know if I can change all the men in my country or change the laws here. But I can guarantee that my son will not have [discriminatory] thoughts in his head.

This is not preaching or advising. I cannot watch my TRP for everything. I could just comment on the latest hits and flops. But I am human. This is something that happened in my country, and affected me deeply. That’s why I am speaking out about it. I might have called fifty people and held a vigil. But that would have ended with those fifty people. I wanted to talk to more people. Lots more men. Change is something that has to start with the individual, in every household.

Using the Internet, Twitter and Facebook alone does not make me a modern man. I become a real modern man – a real man – only when I can respect the women in my society who are equal to, or greater than, me. When I don’t define what their role is, I do whatever they do. And I have no shame in doing the chores, beginning with cleaning the toilet. After all, I am cleaning the toilet in MY house.

This is just what I think. It has not been scripted.

I wish you a happy new year.

Dear All,

As you know, the brutal gang-rape of a young woman in Delhi earlier this month has sparked off rallies and protests against such violence across the country. We invite you to come to Besant Nagar Beach on 29th December at 4 pm to engage in a protest and conversation on this violence.

The Delhi incident is not unique. Sexual violence, ranging from indecent gestures, abusive language, molestation, harassment to more overtly destructive and hurtful acts is something that children, girls, women and people who are seen as sexually ‘deviant’ live with. These acts are reprehensible as well as routine: family members, neighbours, community leaders, custodians of law and justice, including the police and armed forces have all been accused of such rape crimes in this country, and with solid evidence.

Rape exists as a sign of authority, of the dominant castes over subordinated castes, majority right-wing groups over minority groups, the personnel of the state over citizens that it holds in contempt or fear. While rape can happen to any sexually vulnerable section of the population, the fact remains that by and large it is carried out by men against women.

In this context, it becomes important to ask questions about the nature of this violence:

• What are the factors in our environment that allow men to be violent and abusive? is it the nature of our development process that produces desperation, poverty, and criminality?

• Are rapists a bunch of ‘deranged’ individuals, or do their acts reflect something more? Are they vicious expressions of a more widely prevalent culture of contempt, hatred, resentment and aggression towards women?

• While we are all united in wanting the police and the judiciary to be more accountable in ensuring that justice is done, are we letting off other sections that are equally if not more culpable in endorsing a public culture of non-accountability? What about the media, for instance? How do we see the media’s role in ‘selling’ every kind of sexual allure through its advertisements, sensational stories and coups, its many programmes that uphold traditional and disrespectful and discriminating attitudes towards women?

Please share this invite with your friends.

RSVP on Facebook: HumanChainDec29Chennai

Regards,

Human Chain Organizing Committee
For further details: Sivakumar – 9840699776 | Aniruddhan – 8939609670

Thanks: Sneha Krishnan, V Geetha and Shri Sadasivan for draft and Tamil translation

To help address this gap, Vanavil Foundation, a transgender collective in Tamil Nadu, organized the first of a three-part writing workshop in Chennai for members of the LGBT  communities. The workshop was  held on July 21 and 22, 2012, at the All India Catholic University Federation (AICUF) premises in Nungambakkam, Chennai. The event was supported by Orinam and the Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers’ and Artists’ Association.

Twenty seven people people participated in this workshop, which marked the beginning of a several-months long writing process. Participants included those from community groups such as 4G Cluster, Chennai Dost, Erode Aravani Sangam, LesBiT (Bangalore), Nirangal, Orinam, Sahodaran (units 1 and 2), Sangama, SWAM, The Shakti Resource Center, TAI and Thozhi; and some registering as individuals.Vanavil Foundation has planned to support the participants with mentorship provided by Tamil writers and to bring out the results of this process in book form. The two-day workshop was a mixture of talks, sharing, games and exercises.

The workshop began with an introduction by Priya Babu, a well-known aravani activist and writer, also a member of the Managing Committee of Vanavil Foundation. She highlighted the thinking behind planning the workshop – the need for getting our voices out, writing as a therapeutic exercise, to put down in writing our own histories, etc. Mr. Tamilselvan from TPWAA spoke about the power of language to shape thinking and culture. He also emphasized the importance of training and practice and said that workshops such as these could provide exactly that.

In the small ice-breaker exercise that followed, the participants were asked to list out the number of activities that they think could be done in three minutes. Once the list was finalized, they were asked to write a paragraph each in three minutes incorporating at least three items from the list. This activity proved to be a good, humourous ice-breaker.

Mr Saidai J spoke about questions of who writes for whom and how. Interspersing his talk with comical anecdotes, he addressed the need to be clear about whom we are writing for and for what purpose. Aniruddhan Vasudevan shared his experiences as a writer from within the LGBT community in Chennai.

The afternoon session began with a game, facilitated by Srijith Sundaram, a theatre activist, which broke the participants out of stupor. They were then asked to organize themselves into small groups of four or five and were each given a topic to think about pertaining to the issues faced by the identities in the LGBT spectrum. For instance, one group worked on making a list of issues relevant to gay men; another group on issues faced by lesbian women; and so on and so forth. After spending considerable time on making their lists, representatives from each group shared their list and explained their process. At the end of the process, the participants saw that a remarkable number of the issues they had listed out could be grouped under comprehensive topics such as “LGBT and the law,” “Life Story/ Autobiography,” “Social Issues,” etc.

At the beginning of the workshop, the participants had been given a set of written material collated from writings by members of the LGBT community, and allies. At the end of the first day’s workshop, they were asked to read through the material and share the next day about at least one of the pieces.

The second day of the workshop began with a game/ activity facilitated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan. In this well-known workshop game, he called out specific gender and sexual identities and their socio-economic backgrounds and the participants made their one call as to whether the particular identity was a disenfranchised one or not. They then accounted for their judgment. After this exercise, some of he participants shared about their readings from the selected written material provided to them.

A bulk of the second day was spent in a writing exercise. The facilitators of the workshop had organized previous day’s lists into comprehensive topics and provided the groups with smaller lists to choose from. Each participant chose a topic to write from and spent the next hour and a half writing.

In the post-lunch session, each participant shared what they had written. Not only had they chosen different issues to focus on, they had also each chosen different forms of writing – poetry, essay, self-narrative, short-fiction, etc. At the end of each sharing, they also made specific requests for guidance and support. These could be in the form of mentorship as well as assistance in the form of providing resources such as books.Mr Arumugam of TNPWAA gave a consolidated feedback about the exercise and urged the participants to cultivate the habit of reading a lot. Leena Manimekalai, well known poet and writer, was a surprise guest at this event. She spoke about the power of writing to ensure truths never go unsaid. Sharing her experiences as a woman writer who had to fight to make language pliable for her use, she said that it is only with a constant engagement with language that we can make it our own, suitable for our purposes. Manu from Vanavil Foundation thanked everyone for their participation and involvement.

The workshop ended with a commitment on part of Vanavil Foundation to keep the momentum going by checking in regularly with the participants on the progress of their writing work. Moreover, Vanavil has also taken the initiative to collate the reading resources needed by the participants. On 4 August 2012, one group of participants met at the office of Sahodaran to receive further reading material and to discuss what they were working on.

For more information, contact Vanavil Foundation:

• phone Manu at +91 97890 23157 or Thenmozhi at +91 98414 45583
• email vanaviltg@gmail.com
• visit http://vanaviltg.blogspot.com

One of my straight friends recently asked me “Why do you guys need a gay pride, when we are not parading on the street announcing our heterosexuality?”. I could have replied “we don’t follow the so-called social norms defined by the majority of you people”. Instead I took him to one of my favorite beaches, Besant Nagar, where there were plenty of heterosexuals doing all sort of romantic things openly…

Read his essay on the CD blog here.

‘Colours of Sexuality’, a three-day Chennai queer film festival organized by the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan in partnership with local groups Chennai Dost and Orinam, concluded Sunday, June 17,2012. It was one of over twelve events being held in conjunction with Chennai Pride month this year.

Chennai has been organizing queer film festivals and screenings since 2004 (see CQFF is back!). This latest event was attended by parents, media, and LGBT people from Chennai, Bangalore, Kozhikode, Kolkata, and Mumbai.

Colors of Sexuality – Brochure

Twenty eight shorts, documentaries and feature films from ten countries, representing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transmen, transwomen and intersex people’s lives, played to a packed auditorium. Films include the India premieres of Charukesh Sekar’s “Mr. and Mr. Iyer” and Rashmi’s “My Inner Turmoil”. While most of the films were powerful and evocative, the highlight was easily Debalina’s “More than a Friend”, an offering from Kolkata-based Sappho for Equality, one of the oldest groups for lesbian, bi women and transmen in the country. “More than a Friend” set the stage for a public panel discussion on the subject of family acceptance and consequences of family rejection of lesbigay and trans youth. It featured counselor Magdalene Jeyarathnam, human rights lawyer Sudha Ramalingam, transwoman Sandhiya from Sahodari Foundation, Orinam member Sameer Ghunakikar and his father Vinayak Ghunakikar.

Also showcased during the film festival was an exhibition of photographs and art work on and by LGBT subjects.

The film festival elicited good coverage in mainstream media and on blogs. The resultant visibility has already led to an upsurge in LGBT and gender/sexuality-questioning individuals reaching out to local support groups. We also hope that it will lead to more parents seeking out locally available resources for psychosocial support such as counselors and other parents.

The film festival was volunteer-run and financed entirely by donations from community members and allies; with venue, audio-visual equipment and refreshments provided by Goethe Institut. For more information on the film festival organizers, visit

• Orinam.net
• Chennai Dost
• Goethe Institut

Media Coverage:

• June 19, 20102: The Hindu: Breaking Stereotypes
• June 18, 2012: Deccan Chronicle: Colors of Sexuality
• June 17, 2012: The Hindu: Voice at queer film festival: Parents too need a forum to share anxieties
• June 17, 2012: Times of India: Acceptance is key: families of gay youth
• June 16, 2012: The Hindu: Film fest kicks off gay pride month
• June 10, 2012: Times of India: LGBT film fest in Chennai
• June 6, 2012: The Hindu: Rainbow of hope
• June 2, 2012: Times of India: Queer film fest to be part of Pride month celebrations